


Winter Snuggles: Pack Street

by Boney_M



Category: Pack Street - Fandom, Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Gen, Multi, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-09-24 07:11:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9710354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boney_M/pseuds/Boney_M
Summary: With apologies to any of my fans who aren't into Weaver's spin-off of Zootopia: with his apartment's heating on the fritz, Remmy's going to need a little help to get through a particularly nasty cold snap in Zootopia's winter. Lucky for him he's repaired his relationships with the rest of the pack, then.





	1. Al and Velvet 1

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone unfamiliar with Pack Street but curious to learn, you can find Weaver's stories here: http://pastebin.com/u/packstreet

With a clunk and a rattling groan, Remmy was shaken from sleep and was instantly reminded of how ridiculously cold it was. Even with the ancient, rusty boiler in his bedroom at it's highest setting, his nose was achingly cold and every breath he took send cold, sharp needles of pain through his lungs.

But thinking of the boiler had reminded him of the noise that had woken him, and drew his attention to the current absence of noise that now filled the room. The hum and occasional gurgle of the heating unit that had grown so familiar as to be a lullaby was now entirely absent. That realization woke him fully, and he screwed his eyes shut and whimpered. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but he thought he could feel the room growing colder already as the scant, precious heat escaped through the building's woefully inadequate insulation. He fumbled for his phone on his nightstand and groaned when he saw it was barely 2 in the morning.

He had already piled every sheet and blanket he owned onto his bed, and the only other thing he could possibly do to keep the cold at bay would be to wear as much of his clothing as possible and pile the rest atop his blankets, but while that might make the night slightly more survivable, it would make it infinitely more uncomfortable. And as he felt the first tendrils of cold start to seep through his blankets and sap the heat from his wool, he doubted it would be enough.

But as he started to stare down the inevitably of a thoroughly miserable and possibly dangerous long, cold wait for the respite of dawn, another possibility occurred to him. What was it Al had said? 'Put your need out there'? Surely this would qualify...

\---

It had taken Remmy half an hour of agonizing over how good an idea it would be to wake Al in the middle of the night before he finally started to move, spurred into action by what felt like the last of his bodyheat being leeched out through three layers of blankets, one layer of clothing, and one layer of wool. So he propelled himself out of bed with a miserable bleat as the full force of the cold hit him, making his way out of the apartment and down the hallway. For once he was glad that he had hooves instead of the more flexible and sensitive appendages that his packmates had, as the floor's chill tried in vain to penetrate them.

Under any other circumstances, he would have dithered at Al's door for quite some time. Al worked during the day, so he was almost certainly asleep, and Remmy doubted he would react well to being awakened. But the cold left no time for the luxury of hesitation, so before he could stop himself, he rapped on the door with his hoof. He waited for a long moment, heart in his mouth, half hoping that he hadn't been heard so he could slink back to his apartment so he could freeze to death in peace. But then he heard movement - the shuffling thuds of a large mammal who was too sleepy to be anything but lumbering. The door swung open, and Remmy was presented with the sight of a broad expense of thick, shaggy white fur covering a muscular chest. Looking up, he found himself pinned by what little of Al's gaze escaped through his near-closed eyelids.

"What," Al stated. It wasn't a question. He wasn't awake enough for punctuation.

Remmy wanted to freeze up, but he instantly and instinctively knew that nothing would annoy Al more than hesitating and wasting time Al could be spending asleep. So he immediately blurted out, "the heating unit in my apartment broke."

Al stared at Remmy wordlessly, and Remmy shifted from hoof to hoof uncomfortably. He had started to worry he had somehow offended him when Al's tired brain finally processed Remmy's words. "I'll call the repair guy in the morning," he muttered, his gaze still locked on Remmy.

"Yeah, but-" Remmy began, and then cut himself off with an alarmed bleat as Al visibly came to a decision and picked Remmy up with a paw under each arm. Too paralyzed by shock to react, Remmy watched the room revolve around him as Al turned and took him deeper into his den, and watched the front door swing shut with a click behind Al's back. There was a pause as another door was opened, and warmer air enveloped the two of them as Al stepped through a second doorway, and the familiar sound of a functioning heating unit reaching Remmy's ears.

"Who was it, sweetie- oh!" said a groggy, familiar voice as Al shuffled up to an enormous bed. "Remmy, wasn't it?"

"Hi, Velvet," Remmy replied numbly, his mind as fogged with shock as Al's was with sleep. Nevertheless, he tried to explain. "I was just going to ask if he had any spare blankets..." Dimly, he tried to remember what boxers he was wearing, hoping it wasn't the ones with cute little lambs jumping a fence.

"It takes him an hour and three cups of coffee to wake up at the best of times," Velvet said fondly, as Al sat on the empty side of the bed and then reclined back into the mattress, which groaned in protest. He carried the unresisting Remmy down with him, who had just been about to raise a fuss when Al's body heat, combined with the warmth of the room, had started to penetrate through his wool and smothered any resistance. A pair of dainty hooves spread the blankets over Al's body, covering Remmy in the process, and then they encircled the wolf's waist as Velvet snuggled up against his back. Her head came briefly into view as she nuzzled it into the crook of Al's neck, and Remmy's entire body vibrated as Al let out a long, contented growl, his arms tightening around the sheep.

Equally surrounded by blessed warmth and the powerful muscles of an enormous predator, Remmy wasn't sure which had a stronger hold on him. So he resolved to sort the whole situation out in the morning, and let the siren call of sleep - which had begun tempting him the moment Al's warmth had hit him - overtake him.

\---

Al's scent, Remmy decided as he stared at the ceiling, was a lot less objectionable than he would have thought a wolf's would be.

Not to say it wasn't strong, of course. But it wasn't bothering him. It was a smell, he realized, that he had been smelling ever since he had moved into the building. At first it smelled like predator, but now it just smelled like home.

Perhaps, he reflected as he listened to two sets of gentle snoring, that was why he had slept so well, and so easily.

His dozy thoughts were interrupted as a soft, jingling melody filled the air, and one set of the snores broke off as, somewhere out of sight, a hoof fumbled on a bedside table for a phone. A moment later the alarm was turned off and he looked up, still trapped in Al's embrace, and saw Velvet's face slide into view as she placed a gentle kiss on the cheek of the still-slumbering wolf. Then she caught sight of Remmy and froze, staring at him in half-asleep befuddlement. Having no idea what else to do, Remmy gave her as best a wave he could while encircled by Al's arms. There was a visible moment of realization as memory returned to her, and she gave him a smile and waved back before shifting out of his sight.

Remmy felt the mattress shift as the doe lifted herself out of the bed. A moment later she re-entered Remmy's line of sight, and he realized she was wearing what looked like one of Al's shirts. The thing was that while it was wide enough for three of her, it wasn't quite long enough to properly serve her as a nightshirt. Remmy felt his eyes drawn to what he realized was a very shapely set of legs, then forced himself to look away as she leaned forward to rummage through a tote bag before he discovered whether or not she was wearing underwear.

A few moments later there was the simulated click of a camera, and Remmy looked back to see a phone pointing at him and Al. Velvet gave a wicked little chuckle and left the room, a change of clothes tucked under her other arm. Remmy felt his heart sink as he considered the possible ways that picture could come back to haunt him, and with nothing else to do, snuggled deeper into Al's embrace and let himself drift off as he waited for Al to wake up and release him.


	2. Al and Velvet 2

Remmy's barely-conscious mind registered that the enormous bundle of warmth he was clinging to had started to shift, and he gradually mustered enough of his mind to crack an eyelid to investigate, then to search for a direction to look that wasn't a solid wall of white fur. When he finally figured to look up, he saw Al's enormous jaws crack open in an equally enormous yawn, and near-forgotten sheep instincts flooded his system with adrenaline and chased the fog of sleep away, but they met unexpected resistance in his herd instincts - or he supposed his pack instincts, now. Remmy didn't resist as an answering yawn rose from him, and for a moment the two sleepy mammals smacked their lips in unison as Al's arms tightened around the sheep.

Then Al's expression screwed up in befuddlement as he gave the sheep an experimental squeeze, and his eye cracked open to look down at Remmy. The two of them stared at each other for a long moment before Al snorted. "Where's V?"

"Um. Shower, I think."

"Mmm." Al's eyes slipped shut for a moment, then what Remmy said penetrated and they opened again, as a - there really was no other word for it - wolfish smile spread across his face. "Right, then." Seemingly effortlessly he pushed Remmy off his pinned arm, ignoring the sheep's bleat of surprise, and hauled himself out of bed. "Stay put," he threw over his shoulder towards Remmy as he strode out of the room, a wolf on a mission, and it was only then that Remmy realized that Al's bottom half was as naked as his top.

Remmy was about to start wondering what he was supposed to do while he waited, but then he found himself rolling towards the depression that Al had left in the mattress and was enveloped anew in warmth. So he just burrowed deeper into the blankets and let himself drift into half-sleep once more, even as a feminine squeal and laugh rang through the apartment.

\---

An indeterminate amount of time later, the bedroom door swung open again and Remmy groaned as a bundled-up t-shirt hit him in the face, and an almost unfamiliar voice rang out. "Wake up, Cormo, or you're not getting any bug bacon." It sounded like Al, but it couldn't be, Remmy thought. He sounded happy.

As the door swung shut again, Remmy wrestled with the t-shirt and then froze as the smell of it hit his lungs. There was an undercurrent of Al, of course, but the main smell was new to him, though he could easily guess where it came from. He had been surrounded by predators for so long that he had almost forgotten what a prey woman smelled like. Before he could get too wrapped up in coveting an enormous wolf's fiance while in that wolf's bed, he frantically flailed at his head until he dislodged the shirt and flung it across the room.

That crisis dealt with, the new crisis was the possibility of missing out on bacon. Remmy shook himself free of the covers, clambered his way over the mattress, then hit the ground running.

For the first time, Remmy clapped eyes on the main room of Al's apartment with enough light to make out details. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but it wasn't this - the room was small for Al's size, but cozy, with miss-matched rugs tiled together to ward off the chill of the hardwood floor and a comfortable-looking couch in one corner. Opposite it, tucked up against a small kitchenette, was a battered wooden card table surrounded by bare wooden chairs. In the kitchenette itself, Al - freshly bedecked in a pair of boxers and a singlet, thankfully - was busying himself over a hotplate as the scent and sizzle of bacon filled the room, with Velvet snuggled up against his back. She was dressed in a smart but casual skirt and blouse that seemed to clash with the blissed-out expression he could see on the side of her face not pressed up against Al's cheek, and didn't seem bothered by the scent of frying bug-meat.

Remmy sat himself down at the card table, watching the couple in fascination, amazed to see this other side of the alpha wolf. He'd seen Al at the grill at the block party so he knew the wolf could cook, but he wouldn't have expected to see him seem so in his element with a frying pan in one paw and a spatula in the other. The contrast with the Al he thought he had known back when he had first moved in was mind-boggling.

"Another minute and I'd have eaten yours, Cormo," Al said without turning. 

Velvet opened her eyes at that and smiled at Remmy. "Good morning, sleepyhead," she murmured, and Remmy felt his heart skip a beat. "Oh!" she said, and peeled herself away from Al's back to go over to the fridge and bent over to rummage around in it, and once more Remmy had to avert his eyes to keep from staring at her rear.

"It'll be wasted on the lamb," Al muttered, but without rancor.

"Oh hush, you," Velvet said fondly, as she produced an unlabeled glass bottle from the fridge and poured a glass for Remmy, sliding it across the card table to him. Remmy took it and took a polite but cautious sip, hoping it was something he liked like almond or oat, and almost choked as the rich, strange taste hit his throat.

"Is this-"

"The genuine deal," Velvet said with a chuckle. "From a former patient of mine. She sends me a couple of bottles every week." She sat herself down opposite Remmy at the table and watched him, a curious expression in her eyes.

Remmy looked at the glass with fresh eyes. He had known from his experiments with cheese that genuine milk had magical properties, but this taste... it had an entirely new dimension to it. Sure, it was richer and more satisfying than the almond milk he preferred, but more than that it felt fuller, thicker. It felt like... well, something that came from a living creature, rather than something that was squished out of nuts, or however almond milk was made. He took another sip, and the sip turned into a gulp as he couldn't stop from pouring the liquid down his throat. Even after he had swallowed it he felt it lingering in his mouth and throat like a protective coating. It was different to anything he had ever tasted before.

While he was experiencing the milk, Al had finished frying and came over to sit at the table between Remmy and Velvet, three plates balanced in his arms. "Here we go. BLT grilled cheese for the carnivores-" he put plates down in front of himself and Remmy, with one sandwich for Remmy and three for himself. "And the same minus bacon for V." He put the final plate in front of the doe, accompanying it with a kiss on the cheek that caused her face to light up with a smile.

Remmy picked up the sandwich in both hooves, looking at it in awe. Sure, bug-bacon was pretty much the lowest-grade bugmeat there was bound together into a loaf, plumped with vegetable oil and then sliced thin for frying, and by the smell of it the cheese was soy-based rather than the genuine article, but the tomato was fresh, it had been cooked perfectly, and being made with a wolf-size loaf, it was the size of his head. His mouth was already watering before he took the first bite, and he moaned in appreciation as juices dripped down his chin.

When he looked up again, Al was chuckling as his massive jaws engulfed a third of his first sandwich in a single bite, and Velvet had neglected her own sandwich to stare at Remmy in unabashed curiosity. At the confused look he gave her, she said "I had heard about your diet, but I suspected you were just trying to fit in. But you genuinely enjoy it, don't you?"

Remmy nodded vigorously before taking another bite, as Al muttered "told you," through another bite of his own.

"Fascinating," Velvet muttered. She picked up her own sandwich and started to take dainty bites of her own, but her eyes didn't stray far from Remmy for the rest of the meal, a strangely analytical gleam in her eye.

\---

The rest of breakfast was uneventful, and soon after that all three of them had to leave for their respective jobs - Remmy having actually gotten a shift for a change. However, like most of his recent shifts it was during the day since the warehouse didn't enough good enough heating to keep the place warm enough to meet safety regulations. After the amount of time it had taken Remmy to get used to a nocturnal schedule, it was enormously frustrating to have to switch back again, especially knowing that once the weather warmed up a bit he'd be right back on the night shift.

While toiling away at work, Remmy had received a text from Wolter passing on a message from Al, saying that there was a pack meeting that evening. When he finally got home, he found he was one of the last to arrive. The room was full of the building's residents, some fresh from work and some about to head out, all waiting to see why Al had put the word out. Al himself was standing at the head of the room, brooding, and nodded as the last straggler - Charlie, carrying a backpack almost bigger than she was - staggered in. "Marty!" he called out suddenly. "Where the fuck is Ibexistan?"

"So far east of here it's almost west."

"Shit. That's where the spare part to fix Remmy's heater is coming from." Al looked around the room. "Right, time for the omega to lean on the pack. Any other time of year he'd be couch-surfing, but with the weather lately he'd be a frozen meal by morning, so he'll need to be either hot-bunking or snuggling up, depending how schedules line up."

"What?" Remmy bleated, but Al bulldozed right on.

"Volunteer to take the first night?" Anneke's hand immediately shot up, an unnerving grin on her face, and Al just stared at her. "Anyone else?"

"Mi casa es Wooly B's casa," Ozzy chimed in, looking from Anneke to Remmy and giving the latter a grin.

"There you go, Cormo. You'll start with Ozzy and switch apartments every night until you've had a turn with everyone, and if the fuckin' valve regulator or whateverthefuck hasn't come by then, you'll go around again unless you've made a good enough impression to share someone's bed indefinitely." He looked around the room at the various reactions, from Anneke and Avo's open anticipation to Marty and Betty's scowls. "I kept the yarnball warm last night, so I don't want to hear any whining. I'd expect Cormo to do the same for any of you."

With that, Al marched unceremoniously out of the room and up the stairs to his apartment, leaving Remmy at the center of everyone's gaze. Remmy looked down the sofa to Anneke's leer, then across the room to Avo unfolding from her position leaning against the wall and starting to head towards him with a grin, and was just starting to consider running but then Ozzy flopped into the couch next to him. He threw an arm around the ram's shoulder with a laugh and yelled "sleepover!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aww, Remmy's got a crush.
> 
> Here we've got the gimmick. It's only a little bit contrived, too! And not even that if you remember how much everyone loves to fuck with Remmy.


	3. Ozzy

"On a hot summer night," Ozzy asked conversationally, "would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?"

Remmy gave a short, helpless laugh. "Come on, of all the songs-" Ozzy just raised an eyebrow. "Okay, okay. Would he offer me his mouth?"

"Yes," Ozzy replied intently, leaning forward and grinning.

"Will he offer me his jaws-"

"Teeth," Ozzy interrupted.

"Will he offer me his teeth?"

"Yes."

"Will he offer me his jaws?"

"Yes." His voice was a whisper now, but no less intense for it - but bubbling under it was a smothered giggle.

"Will he offer me his hunger?" Remmy leaned forward too, his voice low and intense, his interest piqued as he sensed weakness.

"Yes!" Ozzy's whisper tried to sound hungry, but it was choked off.

"Again," Remmy whispered, his eyes open wide and his voice filled with all the intensity he could muster. "Would he offer me his hunger?"

"Yes!" Ozzy yelled, then couldn't stop himself from giving into the giggles.

"And will he starve without me?"

Ozzy managed to choke back the giggles long enough for another "yes," but only barely.

Remmy swooned back into the chair, a dramatic hoof on his forehead, his eyes downcast demurely. "And does he love me?"

Ozzy collapsed laughing, unable to even get out the final yes, and Remmy gave a victorious grin before Ozzy's contagious laugh got him going to. Eventually, the two pulled themselves together and Ozzy picked up his guitar in preparation. "On a hot summer night," he repeated once more, "would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?"

"Yes," Remmy nodded.

"I bet you say that to all the preds," Ozzy said with a grin, starting to launch into the opening notes before being interrupted by a pillow thrown at his head, and he started laughing again as Remmy shook his head good naturedly.

Bleat Loaf was a classic from a bygone era, when the mere implication of a pred-prey relationship was enough to give the moral guardians conniptions and get every impressionable teenager out to annoy their parents coughing up their allowance. In the current era, when a gazelle pop singer could go on stage flanked by beefy tigers without anyone batting an eye, it seemed almost quaint - or it would, if it weren't for the current resurgence of pred-prey tension. But the songs remained classics even if their edge had been dulled by the passage of time, and Remmy knew them backwards and forwards. There were few role models out there for a rebellious lamb, and a younger Remmy had discovered Bleat Loaf early. Even though his tastes had evolved since then, he still held a soft spot in his heart for one of the only sheep to ever break into rock and roll.

So when Ozzy had broken out his guitar, it had been a natural stop for the jam session, with Remmy tapping along with his hooves on an old set of bongos Ozzy had dragged out of a cupboard.

Ozzy had lost the tune in his chuckling and was strumming up and down aimlessly, seemingly lost in thought, as Remmy sat back and tapped out an equally aimless tune on the bongos, watching the hyena. He thought he knew Ozzy pretty well, but every now and then the cheerful, straightforward soul would disappear into himself for a while. He'd speculate a fair bit ever since he'd heard about Velvet being his social worker, but he had nothing to go on. Even this moments of moodiness could be either directly linked to the root problem, or just a symptom of the struggles he was going through in general.

But while Remmy had been thinking, Ozzy had managed to shake himself out of his stupor and his fingers broke free of their aimless strumming to pick out a tune Remmy knew as well as any he had ever heard, and Ozzy raised an expectant eyebrow at the sheep. Remmy's heart started beating hard in his chest as almost without prompting his hooves begin to tap out the drum accompaniment as he took a deep breath and waited for his cue. He'd sung along to this more times than he could count, and this was his chance to fly solo.

"The sirens are screaming, and the fires are howling, way down in the valley tonight," he began at the top of his lungs. He just knew that within the minute there'd be someone pounding on the door but for now, he didn't care.

\---

What little of his mind wasn't entirely occupied with screaming out lyrics with more enthusiasm than skill was surprised that he got through the entire goddamn song before the banging started, and then he realized that it was applause - both from Ozzy in front of him tapping out applause on the wood of his guitar, and the audience he hadn't realized he had banging on the roof above him in appreciation. He could faintly here an enthusiastic whistle from one of the upstairs neighbours.

It had been an intense song. Cat Out Of Hell was long as hell and required a fair bit of skill on the part of both singer and guitarist, and both Ozzy and Remmy had flubbed it in several places, but both of them had way too much fun with it to care. Both were grinning wildly at each other, equally out of breath, and Ozzy shoved the guitar off his lap to collapse theatrically against the sofa. "Holy shit, Wooly B." He glanced up at the clock on the wall, then gave it another look and sighed. "I better start making dinner." He hesitated for a long moment. "You're welcome to share but... it's not great food, so it's cool if you want to get something else."

"As long as I'm not putting you out of your way, I'm fine to have whatever you're having," Remmy insisted. He knew from the time at Bug Burga that Ozzy was sensitive about money.

Ozzy gave a relieved grin and hauled himself up. "Easiest thing in the world to scale up." He ambled over to the kitchenette and got to work, pulling an assortment of battered plastic tubs out of a cupboard and a handful of mixed vegetables out of the minifridge. Remmy watched curiously, eventually getting to his feet to get a better view. "Bean soup. Betty taught me the recipe, if you can call it that." He said offhandedly as he filled a massive soup pot with water and balanced it carefully atop an ancient plug-in electric hotplate. "Shitload of water, a few boullion cubes, few fistfuls of whatever beans you have," he scooped beans out of three separate container demonstrably and dumped them into the pot, one after the other. "And whatever vegetables you can scrounge up. After that, it's just spices." He waved a careless paw at an apparently hand-made spice rack nestled into a corner.

"Can I help?"

"Sure." Ozzy opened a drawer and took out a knife and slid it over to Remmy along with the vegetables. "Don't chop them too fine, I like the crunch." Remmy looked around for a chopping board but by the look of the counter, none had ever been used. He shrugged and got to chopping. "If you buy bulk, you can pick up beans for pretty much nothing. Grab whatever vegetables are on special, fresh or canned," he scooped up the celery that Remmy had just finished dicing and dumped it into the pot and went rummaging through the cupboard again and found a tin of tomatoes with the label half ripped off. "Some stores still let you have damaged cans for cheaper, even though assholes take that as an invitation to fuck up the cans themselves and ruin it for everyone." He cracked open the can with a bite and dumped the entire contents into the pot, which had started to boil.

Remmy eyed the pot dubiously. "I know there's two of us, but..."

Ozzy grinned. "This is dinner for the week. This stuff'll last forever. After a week it's too thick to eat as soup, but that means you just pour it over rice." Remmy picked up the last of the vegetables and dumped them into the pot as Ozzy eyed the spice rack. After a moment of thought, he grabbed one, popped the lid and gave it a haphazard shake or two over the pot, then repeated it four more times, sending a rainbow of various powders and granules into the soup. Then he dipped a soup spoon into the bubbling concoction and gave it a few hearty stirs, then stood back and shrugged. "Done. Half hour and we'll be eating."

"That easy?" It had barely been five minutes since they started.

"Yep." Ozzy started putting the containers away again. "Everyone knows that ramen'll feed you when you're having a lean week, but when every week's a lean week, this and some protein supplements'll keep a pred going." The statement was matter of fact, but the way he trailed off made Remmy give him a concerned look. Ozzy just stood there for a moment or two watching the pot bubble, and then walked back over to the sofa, faking a smile in response at Remmy's concerned look and then sitting back into it. Remmy stood where he was awkwardly before moving over to the armchair and sitting down, watching Ozzy.

They sat in silence for a long moment, before Remmy picked the bongos back up and tapped one of them thoughtfully. "Hey, Ozzy. Quick question."

"What's up?" Ozzy's voice seemed distant, though he was trying to sound normal.

"What would you do if I sang out of tune?" Ozzy gave a snort of surprise as Remmy tapped out a rhythm. "Would you stand up and walk out on me?"

Remmy's hooves tapped the tune over and over, waiting, and finally Ozzy responded, grudgingly, "that's cheating, man." Remmy continued to tap away insistently and the hyena finally responded, muttering at first but growing more heartfelt, "lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song, and I'll try not to sing out of key."

They launched into the chorus together, and by the end of the first line Ozzy was singing with his heart. "Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends."

\---

By the time the soup had finished bubbling, Ozzy had been shaken free from the grip of whatever had been eating at him and they sat down to a pair of huge bowls of soup. To Remmy's surprise, considering the seeming lack of effort Ozzy had put into it, the soup was quite good. Sure, it was a confused jumble of conflicting flavours, but none of them actually clashed and it kept the meal interesting. That, and Ozzy's huge jaws effortlessly pulverizing the occasional rogue piece of celery or carrot sending minor surges of adrenaline through him. If Ozzy noticed, he didn't comment, instead laying into the soup with passion and a spoon three times the size of Remmy's, then happily taking the rest of Remmy's bowl when he found himself full - a hyena-size serving being overkill for the sheep.

After the two of them had sat in comfortable silence in the prandial afterglow and Ozzy had put a lid on the soup and lifted the entire bowl of soup into the minifridge - and Remmy noticed for the first time that the shelves inside were entirely absent - Ozzy had gone into his bedroom to flick the switch on the heater, and Remmy held his breath for a moment until he heard the familiar gurgle of the ancient pipes working to bring hot water, or steam, or however they worked from wherever the heat came from in the basement, and Remmy excused himself to have a shower and change into his sleep clothes, after triple-checking that the boxers weren't his little lamb ones.

After he finished, he walked into the bedroom to see Ozzy eyeing the bed worriedly. "Look, uh, I'm kind of a hugger in bed. If you want we can drag in the mattress from your place-"

Remmy just shrugged. After last night, being on the receiving end of some sleep-snuggles didn't seem that big a deal. "Long as it's above the belt, I don't really mind at this point."

Ozzy gave a happy smile at that, and held out a paw for Remmy to bump. But as Remmy did so Ozzy grinned and grabbed it, and Remmy felt himself lifted aloft by Ozzy's surprisingly powerful arms, and before he knew what was happening he was flying through the air and a moment later felt the air knocked out of his lungs as he belly-flopped onto the mattress.

Now, if he had ever considered it, Remmy would have been sure that his life was well past the point where pillow fights would feature in any way, shape, or form. But as his hoofs scrabbled for purchase and found one of Ozzy's pillows, he knew with absolute clarity the shape of the future. With a wordless warrior cry, he lunged forward, pillow held high.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For any no-good snot-nosed whipper-snappers that need to get off my lawn who don't recognize the music in this chapter:
> 
> Meat Loaf - You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)  
> Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell  
> The Beatles - With a Little Help from My Friends


	4. Betty 1

"He's the villain, yarnball," Betty explained, waving her paw at the TV. "And Wolf Wrestling doesn't go in for subtlety. He's the villain because he's trying to be the alpha when he's not good enough, when he should know that there are better candidates. And by using trickery to achieve that position he weakens the pack." By the end of the explanation, she was growling in distaste, and she had to take a moment to regain her composure. "But that's why he's a good villain. Everyone feels the temptation to try to reach beyond their grasp. He's the cautionary tale."

"And he's a big, muscled wolf in tight underwear," Remmy noted. He had seen the way Betty had been eyeing the TV.

Betty shrugged shamelessly, a grin on her face as she watched the wolf in question stride across the ring. "There's that, too."

Remmy had never been exposed to the strange world of Wolf Wresting Entertainment before - from what little he knew, it's heyday was decades ago and since then it had been continuing on in it's odd little microcosm of cable access and live events. Apparently it was doing quite well for itself judging by the size of the crowd he could see. "It's... not real, though, right?" 

Betty snorted in response. "Course it's not. If I wanted real, I'd be watching the news and getting pissed off at how shitty everything is right now. Instead, I'm watching my stories. It's a soap opera with violence, live stunts and half-naked males." Betty's jaws snapped at the air as the aforementioned villainous wolf tore his top off with his claws, and she grinned.

"So is it all wolves?"

Betty's eyes were locked on the screen, but she seemed to have the patience to entertain Remmy's questions. "Not gonna lie, it's mostly wolves and similar-size preds. But you'll get a kick out of this - there was a sheep who made it big a few years back, won the championship match against a bear and a jackal. Retired because of injuries and manages Packdown, now."

"Holy shit." Remmy winced as the wolf on the screen smacked another wolf across the muzzle with a sledgehammer and tried to imagine a sheep in the middle of that.

\---

About an hour of violence and dramatics later, Betty snorted and viciously stubbed out her cigarette as a neatly-trimmed, snowy-white wolf pinned an enormous brown bear to the ground as the referee counted it out. "Fuckin' naturally. He always goes over."

"You don't like him?" Remmy prompted.

"Nah. One-dimensional, but pups love him, so he keeps winning. Ozzy digs him, though." She flicked off the TV with the remote and got to her feet. "C'mon, yarnball. I need a burga to wash the taste of disappointment out of my mouth."

Betty's car, to Remmy's surprise, did not stink of cigarettes. It smelled of it, sure, but no more so than Betty herself did, and he was growing used to and even a little fond of that particular scent. The car was also definitely meant for a smaller animal than Betty - it would have been just the right size for Remmy, so Betty had her seat all the way back and still had to stoop over the wheel. But it was transport, which is more than most of the pack had, and it made Bug Burga barely a couple of minutes away and easily reachable on a whim. By the time Remmy had glanced curiously around the interior of the car and tried not to stare at Betty squished into the driver's seat, they had arrived.

The night was still young, so the line was short enough for Betty to restrict herself to dirty looks at anyone who dared to hesitate before ordering. Perhaps spurred along by Betty's looming presence providing encouragement to hurry, they soon found themselves at the teller, being served by a young tigress Remmy had seen working there before. "My treat, carnivore," Betty said forcefully as she eyed the menu, but with a note of fondness. "And don't hold back. Doubt you could eat half what I usually do, anyway." As if to demonstrate the size difference, she lay a massive paw on Remmy's head and ruffled his pompadour fondly.

Remmy was going to go easy on her wallet, but then she had messed with the 'do. "Footlong cicada parmesan sub combo," he said with relish and without mercy, "with real cheese. Cricket dippers and root beer on the side."

"Attaboy," she chuckled. "Gimme... an ultimate quad roach deluxe, a super-size katydid salad, a box of beetle balls and... sure, two classic roach burgers. To go." Remmy just blinked in shock as the tigress rang it up and Betty handed over a few notes from her wallet, and he looked sideways at Betty's body. Of course he had known that she was about Al's size, but somehow it had never really clicked that she would have an appetite to match.

After Betty was handed the enormous paper bag containing the fried treasures, she led them out to the carpark, where the murmur of voices was swallowed by the relative peace of the early night. The only sounds were traffic in the distance and the occassional passing car, and Betty sat herself down on the trunk of the battered car. "C'mon, yarnball, hop up. It's too nice a night to eat inside." With a shrug and a jump he obeyed, causing a clatter as his hoofs scrabbled against the boot while he hauled himself up to sit on the roof. The additional height only served to bring him up to Betty's eye level and no higher, further reinforcing the size difference in his mind.

Betty fished around in the bag and took out Remmy's sub and passed it to him, while pulling out her own massive burga, and as one the two carnivores salivated as they eyed their respective feasts. But Remmy remembered to wait until Betty ate first, and she gave him an approving nod before she turned all her focus to her burga. It was gripped tightly in a single paw, the tips of her claws penetrating the surface of the bun as she took a bite, her jaws tearing off a massive chunk of bread and meat as grease and sauce dripped freely down her chin. Her moan of satisfaction bordered on sexual as she leaned back against the rear window, her eyes closed in bliss, and Remmy couldn't help but stare even more. The loose, comfortable T-shirt she was wearing had slipped off one shoulder, revealing a great deal of glossy black fur, and from his vantage point atop the car he could see down it to vast expanses more, almost - but not quite - lost in darkness.

"Hell of a view, isn't it?" Betty asked after she had swallowed, and Remmy jerked and almost choked on the sub he had been holding to his mouth but not yet taken a bite of. He looked at her face and was instantly filled with relief to see that Betty hadn't caught him checking her out, and was instead looking over at the skyscrapers in the center of Zootopia, rising over the nearby buildings. "Pity it's all assholes over there. The thing about a city..." she added musingly. "You live in a town or a village and it's only half shit, then you're still dealing with shit every damn day. But in a city, even if it's 95% shit, you can still hunt down that last little 5% and build a life for yourself in it and it's like all the rest of that shit is in a whole different world."

"Did you used to live somewhere else?" Remmy ventured.

Betty just smiled and took another bite of her burga. "Woman's gotta preserve some mystery, grazer," she muttered through a mouthful of meat and grease.

As Remmy considered her words further, he finally took a bite of the sub that he had been coveting for some time but had never gotten around to actually trying. And in an instant all thought about anything but the sub in his hands was obliterated. The cicadas had been joined together into a solid mass by the deep-fried batter, but the batter parted easily under his teeth until he reached the solid chunks of cicada, which were somehow even crunchier than regular bugs after being fried. As he chewed, the bugs disintegrated into grease and flavour, mixing with the sauce and cheese into a decadent ambrosia. He was dimly conscious of himself letting out a moan of pleasure to rival Betty's, but in the moment was completely unable to care.

He eventually rejoined reality to realize that Betty was staring at him in open fascination. "I swear, you enjoy meat more than most actual predators."

Remmy had no idea how to respond to that.

\---

Remmy groaned in contented agony as the car pulled up outside Betty's place once more. His eyes had definitely been bigger than his stomach this time. The footlong sub, and the cricket dippers, and then on Betty's encouragement he had tried some of the katydid salad. He had thought he could manage some of a nice, light salad on top of his enormous meal, but the 'salad' had turned out to be the leaf-like katydids mixed in with fried cherry tomatoes and croutons, and was delicious enough that he'd dug in anyway.

"Out you hop, yarnball."

Remmy protested with a wordless moan, but took Betty's extended paw and managed to haul himself out of the car, and with a shove from Betty tottered in the general direction of the front door, and he managed to not trip over his own hooves on the steps that Betty usually harassed him from. Though, he thought, he couldn't really call it harassment at this stage, since it wasn't really unwelcome any more-

As Betty opened the lock, she gave Remmy what he'd almost think was a concerned look, picking up on his distraction. "You okay, Remmy?"

He considered playing it up for drama, but considering how brutally she had mothered him when he had been actually sick, he decided it was a bad idea. "I'm fine. Just feel a massive food coma coming on."

"Bedtime, then." With a paw on his shoulder, she guided him through the living room and into a darkened bedroom, pausing only to flip a switch on an electric space heater in front of the bed. Remmy flopped gratefully onto the bed, his head turning to idly watch as Betty moved around the room. She went over to a set of drawers in the corner and rummaged through it, eventually pulling out what looked like a set of yoga pants. But then, with a backwards glance and a grin as her eyes met Remmy's, she started to strip naked.

It wasn't as much of an exposure as it sounded - between the lights being off and the darkness of her fur, Betty's silhouette was visible only when she moved. But somehow, her peeling away her lighter-coloured clothes and the bared fur melting into the darkness sent Remmy's pulse racing even further, especially when he realized that he didn't see the lighter patch of underwear on her - either she'd taken that off with her pants or she'd never been wearing it. She'd been wearing tracksuit pants instead of her usual jeans when they'd gone out, so she could have been going commando the entire time.

As Remmy's mind had been ticking over, the wolf had pulled on the yoga pants and had turned to face Remmy, still bare from the waist up, her grin widening when she saw she had his full attention. "You're not going to sleep in your shirt, are you?" Betty's tone was normal, but her predatory grin stood out against her black fur like that of the Cheshire Cat, and he could hear her tail swishing through the air behind her.

The thought of disobeying even a tacit command was unthinkable to Remmy at that point. With only a brief moment of self-entanglement he managed to get up on his knees, struggle out of his shirt and drop it off the side of the bed, his wool expanding slightly at being released.

"Good," she practically purred, climbing up on the bed. Remmy swallowed hard as he stared at her, then gave a surprised bleat as she gripped him across the shoulders and pulled him forward so that he overbalanced, his face buried in her lap.

Then Betty reached over and grabbed a laptop from the bedside table, and plopped it down onto the soft, yielding surface of Remmy's newly-exposed wool.

"What." Remmy's tone was flat and disbelieving.

"Some of us still have work to do, fuzzball," Betty said airily as she opened the laptop, and the whirr of the fan and the chime of the computer's OS sounded off.

"But- you- I thought-"

"What is it, fluff?" Betty asked, her innocent tone as artificial as the cheese you got at Bug Burga if you didn't pay extra to upgrade.

"Nothing," he surrendered.

There was a soft chuckle as she began typing. But as Remmy lay there, he had to admit to himself that the laptop's fan blowing hot air into his wool certainly warmed him up in a hurry. With a huff, he resolved to ignore the ignominy of being used as a computer desk and snuggled his head into Betty's thigh, tried not to pay too much attention to where his head was currently located, and let himself be lulled to sleep by the gentle, rhythmic click of claws against keys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to Nobby, for drawing this picture: http://nobby-art.tumblr.com/post/156719366730/tgweavers-pack-street-really-is-a-great-setting
> 
> I pretty much built the entire carpark scene on it.
> 
> In case there's anyone at all on the Venn diagram of a) reading this, b) cares enough about wrestling to want to know who I'm referencing, and c) doesn't know enough wrestling to recognize it without being told: the villain is HHH, the sheep is Daniel Bryan, the bear and jackal he won against are Batista and Randy Orton, and the closing match was between John Cena and Rusev.


	5. Betty 2

Remmy woke up with his face in a wolf's crotch.

He then spent some time pondering how that realization had quelled the moment of panic at waking up somewhere unfamiliar.

He lifted his head cautiously from the thigh he had been using as a pillow, and was relieved to note that there was no longer anything balanced on his back. When he straightened up fully, he smiled as he took in the view of Betty sprawled in front of him, snoring gently. She must have finished her work and then carefully lay back to keep from disturbing him, since she was lying diagonally on the bed.

He gently eased himself off the bed and through the doorway to the en-suite bathroom, stepping carefully to keep his hoofs from clicking too loudly on the tile, and took care of the full bladder that had awakened him, trying his best not to make too much noise with the clicking of the seat on porcelain (he knew better than to leave the seat up) and then wincing when the flush made what sounded like way too much noise.

He made his way back to the bedroom, and evidently either his absence or the toilet flushing had awoken Betty, because one her eyes was open a sliver. As soon as he approached the bed, a massive claw reached out and down towards him, entangled itself in the wool of his chest, and dragged his unresisting form onto the bed and then atop her chest. Her massive arms wrapped around him and her muzzle buried itself in his head wool, and she gave a contented sigh that pushed her warm breath across the top of his head.

Remmy just sighed, snuggled a little deeper into Betty's fur, and let himself drift off again.

\---

When Remmy awoke once more, it was to find that he'd been tucked under Betty's arm as she hauled herself out of bed. The first slivers of the day's sunlight were drifting in through the window, matched by the flicker of flame as Betty lit her first cigarette of the day with her free paw, and Remmy just gave a little sigh as Betty carried her over to a set of drawers she rummaged around inside for a moment, and then out of the room.

She paid a stop to the refrigerator, grabbed a battered old drink bottle out of the door and took a swig, then passed it down to Remmy, who struggled to drink from it while suspended under Betty's arm. She grabbed the paper bag with last night's leftover burgas from a shelf and then carried her cargo over to the couch - big by wolf standards, so to Remmy it was the size of a bed. Betty shifted her sheep cargo to in front of her then collapsed backwards into the couch, seating Remmy firmly in front of her.

"So, um," Remmy began, slightly nervous. "What's- what's going on?"

"You being piss-poor at taking care of yourself, that's what's going on," Betty groused, shifting around behind him.

"What do you mean- oh!" Remmy bleated, as he felt something start to tug on the wool of his back. "Oh. Okay." He shrugged and decided to just let it happen, until he realized something. "Wait, is that-" Remmy twisted in Betty's grip and caught sight of what she was wielding. "It's a burr comb! Why do you have a burr comb?"

"You want to ask questions or you want to get your raggedy fuckin' wool taken care of?" Betty growled, the implicit threat in the tone of her voice making it clear what the correct answer was.

Remmy opened his mouth to reply, and his survival instinct managed to stamp down his curiousity just in time. "Well, when you put it like that..." He turned forward once more compliantly, and after a moment the comb started running through his wool once more.

"Damn right," she muttered, digging the comb back in with slightly more force than was necessary. After a minute, Remmy started to enjoy it. It had been a long time since anyone but him had taken proper care of his wool, and anything but the shortest-cut wool really needed someone to help out to do a proper job at the back. He was reasonably sure there wouldn't be too many burrs in it - it might not be combed, but he did shampoo it regularly and thoroughly - but it also served to get the tangles and knots out. At first the slight tugs as the comb met resistance was almost constant, but Betty was surprisingly gentle when one put up any real fight, pausing in the combing to unknot the worst of them with her claws. And before long, the comb was gliding through his wool without obstruction and he had descended into a half-asleep reverie.

And then Betty put aside the comb, pushed her paws into his untangled wool, and started to run her claws down the skin of his back, and he melted into pure bliss.

One of the worst things about being a sheep was that hooves weren't that great for scratching in the first place, and when the itch was buried under a thick layer of wool, a sheep had to learn to just ignore minor itches to keep their sanity. So over the course of a regular day, dozens of little irritations built up under their wool, and it wasn't until a sheep shaved that they could get at them - and that came with even more itching as the wool regrew.

So as Betty's claws glided through the freshly-combed wool, the sensation of countless neglected itches finally being scratched radiated through Remmy's body in a wave of pure ecstacy, and he melted against her paws.

If Betty was surprised by the sheep turning boneless in her arms, she didn't show it. She just gave a low, deep chuckle and kept running her claws down his body, pausing here and there as she found the last of the snags in his wool before returning to the scratchy massage.

At some point, after an unknowable amount of time, the massage stopped. By the time Remmy found his way back to conscious thought, Betty was batting at his wool from various angles, and whatever she was testing seemed to satisfy her, because she wrapped her arms around his middle, his newly-tended wool parting like a cloud, and rested her chin atop his head.

"Not that I'm complaining," Remmy said after he mustered up his courage. "But... what's happening right now?"

"If you know a better start to the day, fluff, go ahead and share it," she muttered, her low voice sending reverberations through the top of Remmy's head. Without moving her head, she brought her cigarette to her lips and took a drag.

"I wouldn't have guessed you'd be so cuddly."

"If you tell anyone, I'll shear you bald." A moment later, Betty unlatched one of her arms from around Remmy to reach out and grab the bag she had taken from the fridge, and fished out a burga left over from last night's dinner, handing it to Remmy before bringing her arm back to the hug. 

Remmy cautiously unwrapped the refrigerated burga, poking it and giving it a cautious sniff. "This is half-frozen," He noted dubiously.

"The best part is crunching the icicles in the grease," Betty murmured. Remmy shuddered in disgust, but took a tentative bite anyway, then a larger one. It wasn't nearly as good as a fresh burga, but in Remmy's mind, very little was - and though the sauce, cheese and grease had blended together into a half-congealed mess with the consistency of mucous, it still tasted... well, like a burga. Except somehow even greasier.

Remmy lingered over his refrigerated burga, as Betty did with her cigarette, but eventually both were done and Betty was stubbing the cigarette out on an ashtray balanced on the armrest. She gave a long and heartfelt sigh, giving Remmy a final squeeze. "I don't know about you, yarnball, but I've gotta shower and get to work." She reluctantly unwrapped her arms from around Remmy. "Don't forget your shirt."

Remmy lifted himself off the couch, only just noticing how much warmth Betty's body had been giving off now that he had been deprived of it. Using his hooves for the first time of the day, he tottered back into the bedroom, feeling Betty's eyes on him the entire way, and emerged shortly after pulling his shirt over his head. "Thanks for giving me a place to stay tonight, Betty. And for last night, it was fun."

"You're a plushy and a space heater and actually tolerable company all in one. Hell, you're welcome in my bed any time." Remmy paused in his tracks at that, turning his head to look at Betty. Betty grinned at him, knowing full well what was going on in his head. "Off you go, fluff."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter heavily inspired by this image by dotaluit:
> 
> https://e621.net/post/show/967420/2016-3-anthro-betty_-weaver-canine-caprine-cigaret


	6. Anneke and Wolter

Remmy had been dreading this.

Well, sort of.

Sure, Anneke could be fairly, well, predatory, but he had been doing a fair bit of thinking about how it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if she was unleashed on him. But that line of thinking was to be explored with hesitation and baby steps, not by allowing the aardwolf unrestricted access to his unconscious form. So he was hoping that he could bunk with Wolter and just have a nice, peaceful night between two guys, like he had with Ozzy. But he knew Anneke wasn't going to make that easy.

So when he finally gathered up his courage and pushed the ajar door to the twins' apartment open, he felt like he had psyched himself up to the point where he was prepared for anything. And when he found the almost entirely mundane sight of one of the twins reading a magazine while laying back on the couch while the other stood over them and gave them an annoyed glare, he was almost disappointed.

"Um. Hi, guys. What's going on?"

"She's pretending to be me," the one flipping through a magazine said, amused. Wolter, judging by the voice.

"No, she's the one pretending to be me!" the other insisted, outraged. Strangely, they sounded like Wolter too.

Remmy looked from one of them to the other, his eyes narrowed. One of their voices definitely sounded slightly lower than the other, but was that Anneke still being higher-pitched than her brother even while pretending, or her over-compensating by making her voice too deep? Apart from that, both of them were speaking in Wolter's drawl, and both were missing Anneke's characteristic scratchiness. They were also wearing the same clothes - their usual singlets, and the jeans they had started wearing when the weather turned cold. If there was any other visible difference between the two (not counting the obvious), Remmy had yet to find it.

After a moment of though, he found himself frowning. The twins were, well, twins. They were probably better at pretending to be each other than he was at telling them apart. So he decided to stick to the tried and true - he shrugged and gave up, deciding to ignore the situation and hope it went away. He walked past the twins towards the kitchenette, a mirror of the one in his apartment, and hoisted the bag he was carrying onto the counter. "I figured since you guys are hosting me, I'll take care of dinner." Their argument immediately forgotten, both twins turned to look at the sheep in anticipation. Remmy lifted the bag that Al had got for him, placing it down on the counter and unzipping it. "You two hungry?"

"Absolutely. What's on the menu?" one of them asked.

"Sliders," Remmy said with a grin.

\---

He had gone all out on his preparations, even asking Al for some tips, which the wolf was happy to provide when he learned what it was for. He had been directed to a small butcher a few blocks away, where the grey-furred butcher had pretended not to speak the same language as Remmy until he had mentioned Al had sent him. The local supermarket had decent enough bread as long as you checked the sell-by dates, and he had bought a jar of pickles just for this. And, last but definitely not least, his secret weapon: the last of his sachets of Bug Burga's late, lamented firefly sauce.

He had prepared the patties before he came over, and all that remained to be done was to dig out the twins' frying pan, place it over the gas burners, squirt some oil onto it, and wait for it to heat up enough to start cooking. The two aardwolves had come over while he had gotten started to peer into the bag curiously, and he smiled fondly as they flanked him. After spending so much time with the larger mammals of the pack, it was nice to not be towered over for a change.

He noticed that their attention had been drawn to the small lump of his prized genuine cheese. "You guys want cheese on your sliders? It's the real stuff."

"Real cheese?" The Wolter on his left scrunched their face up. "Like from an actual mammal?"

"Yep, a cow. Tastes so much better than the artificial stuff." Left Wolter's face remained scrunched as he considered that, but Right Wolter seemed curious, so Remmy sliced off a couple of small slivers for the two of them to try. While they were considering their slivers, Remmy dropped the first of the slider-sized patties into the pan, and almost immediately the sound and smell of frying bugmeat filled the room.

\---

The twins' appetites seemed bottomless that night, matching Remmy slider for slider until they'd gone through a round dozen between them, standing around the kitchen eating as the next lot fried. They had taken to the cheese with a passion too, and combined with the firefly sauce it made for a delicious meal, especially since they all knew it could be the last time they ever tasted the discontinued sauce again.

The final round of sliders had been eaten on the stained, tatty couch up against a wall, which had cushions that had given up to the point that it was possible to fall entirely into the base of the couch if you weren't careful. Remmy had taken one side, wary of being trapped between the two of them, and had watched with pride as they lost themselves in the mini-burgers he had made, grease and firefly sauce staining the fur of their muzzles.

One of the moaned in equal parts delight and discomfort as they popped the last mouthful of slider into their mouth, their other paw holding their stomach. "Oh, man. Good thing you're done cooking, I'd have kept eating until I exploded if there was more."

"You liked it, then?" Remmy asked, a pleased smile spreading across his face.

"Absolutely. My compliments to the chef," one of the Wolters drawled. "That was even better than Bug Burga."

"I should have gotten my mouth around your meat earlier," the other agreed, and then slapped their paws over their mouth as two sets of eyes turned to them.

"Well," Remmy said after a long pause. "Unless Wolter has discovered something about himself tonight-" the Wolter that hadn't spoken punched him in the shoulder- "I'm pretty sure that you're Anneke."

"Damn iiit," she whined, returning to her familiar, scratchy voice. "I lasted so long, too."

"So, now that you're found out," Remmy said, noting a dollop of firefly sauce on Anneke's singlet in case he mixed up the twins again later, "why the act, anyway?"

Anneke shrugged as she leaned back against the couch. "I figured that since you're still in denial about your insatiable lust for preds, you'd talk Wolter into shutting me out of the bedroom, and I wanted to get in on guy's night."

"Why?" Remmy asked cautiously, though he thought he could guess.

"Because from what you and Ozzy got up to, it sounds like a lot of fun goes on between you and your host behind closed doors," Anneke said, punctuating her words with a lecherous grin.

"What?" Remmy bleated.

"Oh come on, the entire building heard you two with your dad rock. Not a bad singing voice on you, by the way." Her grin widened. "What did you think I meant? Was there something else loud and fun that you and Ozzy got up to?"

Having walked right into that one, Remmy could just groan.

"Besides, if neither of us is getting laid - I mean, you're not, right?" she asked Wolter, who just rolled his eyes. "Then we usually bunk up. Share the heating in winter, and the air conditioning in summer. Saves on bills."

"That makes sense," Remmy admitted cautiously. The twins, he knew, were very paws-on. Even when they weren't feeling some poor mammal up, they could often be seen sprawling atop each other or someone else - usually Ozzy - on the foyer couch. It made a certain amount of sense that that'd carry over to how they slept, and it was common for many species to platonically share warmth in winter - though less so nowadays than it had been in the past.

"If it makes you feel better, Wolly will protect your precious innocence," Anneke said weedlingly.

"Nope," was Wolter's instant reply.

"What?" was the dual reply, half-bleat and half-yowl.

"I'm not getting into the middle of this. Either Remmy trusts you not to molest him in his sleep or he doesn't."

Remmy cocked his head as he considered that. The twins practically embodied sleaze, but when he thought about it he didn't think either of them were capable of anything more sinister than some playful groping. A night spent with Anneke would probably involve her claws doing an awful lot of exploring, but no more than that unless she managed to get him to consent. "Well, when you put it like that... I guess Anneke can bunk up with us."

Anneke gave a wordless sound of delight and punched the air. "Yay! Boy's night!"

\---

"Really? This is boy's night?" Anneke looked outraged as she watched the other two getting ready for bed. She was wearing a shirt so big it almost trailed the ground, and she had just so happened to sit in such a way to display her orange boyshorts with 'fun bun' printed across them to Remmy multiple times. He had no doubt they were both taken from former paramours of hers.

"Well, yeah. It's time for bed, so we're going to sleep." Wolter was wearing a pair of boxers and was snuggled into the covers across the bed from Remmy.

"But it's barely ten o'clock!"

"It's winter, I'm hibernating."

"Aardwolves don't hibernate."

"We can if we want."

"Oh c'mooon. Where's the antics? The gossip, the Seven Minutes In Heaven, the truth-or-dare, the pillow fights?"

"Well, the thing is, we're not teenage girls," was Wolter's drawled reply. 

Anneke huffed at that, then turned to Remmy, who had supplemented his protective layer of wool with a faded band t-shirt. "Back me up here, Remmy. What did you and your other hosts get up to after lights out?

"I'm not a ram to kiss and tell..." Remmy began as he pulled the covers back, watching Anneke lean in, her eyes bright. "But that's not really relevant here, because there's no kissing to tell. We slept, that's it." He grinned at her outraged squeal as he climbed into the bed. It was more than big enough for the three of them and comfortable to boot, but then he supposed that it wasn't surprising that the twins would have good, big beds.

"C'mon, we gotta do something, it's a waste of a perfectly good sleepover otherwise," Anneke whined as she clambered across the sheets to slip under the covers between the two, taking the opportunity to get in an extra wiggle or two against Remmy's side. "How about spin the bottle?"

"That's got a one-in-three chance of you making out with your brother," Remmy noted.

"Veto," Wolter muttered sleepily.

"Okay, how about kill-bang-marry? For the pack."

Remmy mulled that over for a moment. "Wouldn't it just be bang for everyone?"

"Really? You'd bang Al? And Marty?"

"Well, if the alternative was killing or marrying them..."

"Okay, I could see that. Okay, how about... if you had to marry one of them, who'd it be?"

"Wow, that's a good one." Remmy snuggled his face deeper into the pillow as he thought about it. "Ozzy."

"Holy shit, really? Didn't know you swung that way."

"I don't, but he'd probably be a whole lot cooler about a sudden contrived marriage than anyone else."

"That's true. Still pretty gay, though."

"How about you?"

"Definitely Avo. Then she'd have to let me use her employee discount at Pandora's."

Remmy chuckled. "You've certainly got your priorities in order. Hey Wolter, how about you?"

"Velvet," he replied instantly.

"Damn, I didn't even think of her. I want to change my answer now."

"And divorce Ozzy? You heartbreaker."


	7. Avo

Remmy had been greeted at the door by Avo, who waved in him while rattling off what seemed like a slightly hurried pre-prepared speech. "Ground rules for my apartment, fluff. Don't try to get into the other room," she pointed at the closed door. "You wouldn't be able to, but don't try anyway. If you borrow any of my toys, sanitize them afterwards - there's antibacterial soap under the sink - and don't use any silicon-based lube with them. Lube's in the drawer over there, and it's all clearly marked, so stick to the water- or oil-based. You probably don't need to be told this one, but if you do manage to lure any company back here while I'm gone: negotiate a safeword first if you're going to be playing the sorts of games where no might not mean no."

Remmy stared at her blankly, knowing better than to give her a reaction to work with. She grinned even wider at his non-reaction, popping the lollipop back into her mouth.

"Anyway, make yourself at home, because I'm off to work."

That got a reaction from him. "You're leaving?"

"Yep. I'm on the night shift. What, expecting another cozy little sleepover?"

"Well-"

"I'll have to give you a raincheck." Avo grinned her usual grin, gave him a sardonic little wave, and left.

Remmy stood there for a moment, feeling a blend of relief and disappointment. He hadn't known what to expect from his sojourn at Avo's, but it wasn't this. Then he shrugged, and took the opportunity to look around the place. He'd seen it all before, but he knew more now than when he'd first entered the place. He approached the bookshelf and gave the line of bizarre obelisks a long, hard look. As he'd suspected, they were the sex toys he'd seen at Pandora's - the 'Buildo'. A line of black monolith with gold markings that he'd first taken to be ornamental, but now he knew them to be functional as well. He gave one a careful poke with his hoof, and watched it barely wobble, showing a surprising amount of heft.

Then he shrugged. If Avo kept shelf after shelf of dildos where others would keep books or ornaments, that was her business, he reminded himself. Then he snorted to himself. It literally was her business, since she worked at an adult shop. And there wasn't anything wrong with that, since Pandora was such a sweetheart, or so he reasoned. And being judgmental hadn't really served him well in Pack Street.

His mind made up on the matter, he turned his back on the bookshelf full of dildos and made his way over to raid the fridge.

\---

"Hey, Rem." Remmy was shaken awake, and after the past week managed to smother the moment of panic at waking somewhere unfamiliar, and the larger one at a set of claws gripping lightly at his shoulder. The room was half-illuminated in the light coming from the living room, and Avo was standing over him, waving a slip of paper under his nose.

Remmy grabbed it out of her hands and peered at it, then lifted it up to catch the light from the living room. 'We regret that the advertised item below was not available to you today-'. "It's an actual fucking raincheck."

"Yep." Avo managed to pack a whole bunch of pleased with herself into that one word.

She had even filled it out. Item: Cozy Little Sleepover, x1. Price: Your Innocence. Well, that was foreboding. "You woke me up just for this? What time is it, anyway?"

"It's four AM. And I would've woken you up just for that, but I also got a pizza if you want in on that." Without waiting for an answer, she turned and walked back into the living room.

Remmy let his eyes close again, but now that she mentioned it, the scent of pizza in the air was impossible to ignore, and his stomach began to growl insistently. The pickings of Avo's fridge had been pretty sparse. He screwed up his eyes, then opened them. "Damn it," he whined, as he started to crawl out from under the covers, doing his best to ignore Avo's amused snickering.

In preparation for his sleepovers, he'd carefully excised his wardrobe of anything even remotely embarrassing, and prepared the blandest of his boxer shorts for this night specifically. He'd even worn a singlet to bed, which he normally didn't. Everything about his current appearance was carefully designed to give Avo nothing to work with, and he sleepily reminded himself of that fact as he hesitated in the safety of the darkened bedroom. He knew the second he stepped out, she'd be looking for any weakness to tear into, and he hoped that his preparations had prevented that.

After all that, he was almost disappointed when he stepped out of the room and was utterly ignored.

Avo was flopped down on the couch, pizza in one hand and some sort of booklet in the other, with the pizza box laying open on the coffee table on top of a larger, unmarked cardboard box. Remmy approached cautiously. When he was new to Pack Street, he would have approached an eating predator cautiously out of fear; now, he was more worried about her tongue than her teeth, and he was in no mental state to be able to defend himself. And still, she remained silent, her mouth entirely occupied with the pizza.

And speaking of, it smelled good. Onion, bugmeat, barbecue sauce, and... was that rice?

"Don't know if you're into termites, so it's only on half the pizza," Avo mumbled around her own mouthful.

Remmy leaned over and peered down at the pizza. He'd never tried termites, but if they tasted like ants he definitely didn't want anything to do with them. But if they didn't... he looked at his hoof, then down at the pizza, trying to figure out his chances of being able to pluck one of the tiny insects off without brutalizing the entire slice. It didn't look good.

"Oh, for- come here, cotton swab," Avo said, rolling her eyes and picking a termite off her slice and holding it out for him.

Remmy peered at her, but if it was a trap he couldn't see how. So he held out his hoof and she placed the little bug on it, and he dropped it into his mouth. To his surprise, it tasted nothing like the other bugs he'd liked, instead having a rather mild starchy taste with a hint of nuttiness. "Huh, that's not bad. I was expecting it to taste more like ants."

"Ugh, no. Leave the ants to the twins."

With no further ado, Remmy took a slice of pizza with the termites and went to take a seat on the couch. He'd expected Avo to sit up to make room for him, but instead she just lifted her legs, and after a moment of hesitation he sat down and she immediately dropped her legs across his lap. Something told him to start worrying, but it was hard to do that with pizza in his hoof, so instead he started eating.

\---

"So, what's the catch," Remmy mumbled, doing his best not to succumb to fatigue now that his sleepiness wasn't reinforced by a bellyful of food. He had slouched down in his seat, and Avo had responded by burying her feet in his belly wool that had slipped out from under his singlet. She had refused to let him get up after she had gotten comfortable again, instead handing him slices of pizza until they had finished it off between them.

"What, I can't do something nice for my temporary flatmate? I have to be planning something nefarious? Cotton swab, you wound me." Avo's tone was saccharine, her grin belying her words. Remmy just looked over at her until she relented. "Well, now that you mention it, I could use your help with a project."

"And you're bribing me into it." Remmy shut is eyes. "I'm not going to like this, am I."

"You're probably gonna get all weird about it, yeah." She lifted her legs off him and slid off the couch and onto her feet, and Remmy's eyes, cracked back open since she started moving, were drawn to her. She'd undone all the buttons on the already fairly loose polo shirt that was her work uniform, so it practically hung open, exposing the light tan fur of her chest that contrasted so sharply with the dark brown of the rest of her. If she was aware of Remmy's eyes on her, she didn't show it, first taking the empty pizza box to the kitchen and then coming back over to the coffee table to look down at the large cardboard box. "We got a new supplier for some of more niche products at work, but Dora isn't too sure of them, so she asked me to test out their stuff, and I need you to help me out."

Hypnotized by the amount of creamy fur Avo was exposing as she leaned over the coffee table, Remmy took a while to process her words, but when he did he was immediately shaken out of his stupor. He crossed his hooves protectively in front of his lap, getting ready to leap to his feet and bolt out the door and into the night. "If it goes on me or especially in me, it's not happening."

"Can't take your innocence when you still need it to pay for that sleepover with, can I?" Avo said, lifting the box into her arms. It was unmarked cardboard and almost flat, though by how Avo was hefting it, seemed like it had a fair bit of weight to it. By the time she had carried it over and sat down on the couch with it balanced on her lap, Remmy had started to grow more curious than afraid.

As she used her claws to slice open the tape at one end of the box, she used her spare paw to point Remmy towards the booklet she had been reading earlier. With some trepidation, he picked it up and almost immediately dropped it when he saw the picture on the front - a fully naked female weasel suspended from what looked like a four-poster bedframe. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he finally found the words to express his feelings: "what the fuck, Avo?"

"Like I said, new product. It says 'for mustelids', so we figured it could hold weasels and stoats and such fine, but we don't want a badger or an otter buying it and then having it collapse on them." Avo looked at the metal beams she had slid out of the box, and then picked up a tiny hex key and considered it. "So I said I'd take one home, put it together and suspend some weights from it, see how it went."

"And you want my help-"

"To put it together. You ever dealt with flat-pack furniture before? It's a two-mammal job, even when it's weasel-sized." She grinned at Remmy. "What, did you think I had designs on your orifices?"

Remmy just sighed, and opened the booklet, hurriedly skimming past the instructions for use until he got to the 'how to assemble' section.

\---

"So that's all of them? No leftover screws this time?"

"I fucking hope so."

"What do you mean you hope so, you didn't count them?"

"I was too busy working this fucking weasel-size hex key, you want to get down here and try working this?"

Remmy groaned in frustration, looking away from the booklet in his hooves and at what their work had wrought. It was a stark and polished steel frame that was, as the illustrations had depicted, meant to suspend a mammal by all four paws, apparently for an extended period of time, for what the booklet made abundantly clear was for incredibly kinky purposes. And it fit comfortably on Avo's coffee table.

It made for one hell of a conversation piece, he supposed.

Avo groaned as she got to her feet, and then again as she stretched out, her arms reaching above her head. "That was way more trouble than I thought it would be," she grumbled.

"Okay, what next? Because if my next job is to try to strap Marty into this thing, I'm leaving."

Avo shook her head, looking serious. "Marty's way too small for the testing. We'll need either Charlie or one of the twins, they'd weigh about the same as a badger or an otter." She patted the top of the stainless steel frame. "What do you think, could I seduce one of them into this thing?"

A series of mental images flashed through Remmy's head, and though he tried to school his expression to keep from showing it, Avo's sudden grin made it clear she knew exactly what he was thinking. He opened his mouth to try to form a reply, and her grin widened. In as neutral a voice as he could muster, he stated, "I don't have any thoughts one way or the other."

"Oh, I think we both know that you have plenty of thoughts on the subject," she practically purred. "However, that's going to have to remain between you and your twisted imagination, because I've got a better idea." Ignoring Remmy's muttering that the seduction was her idea in the first place, she strode over to the kitchen and fished out a broom that was wedged between the fridge and the wall, then stepping on the head of the broom and yanking the handle out.

"I'm not liking where this is going," Remmy bleated.

"That's because you've got a filthy mind." Remmy watched cautiously, once more ready to leap up and flee out the door, as she approached, and then bemusedly as she strapped the broomhandle into the tiny little wrist and ankle straps with the help of a pair of zipties. Then she returned to the kitchen and rummaged for a while, and then returned with a pair of items - a box of white wine in a plastic bag, and a filter jug full of water - and carefully dangled the two from either end of the broomhandle. She stepped away cautiously as the broomhandle swayed in the grip of the zipties and restraints, before settling down. The faux-leather of the straps had creaked alarmingly as the weight had been added, but didn't seem to be in imminent danger of breaking.

"You know," Remmy said thoughtfully as the two of them stared at the strange contraption they had created. "If someone told me this was a modern art piece that was symbolic of something or other, it wouldn't even occur to me to doubt it."

"It does seem like a tortured attempt at a metaphor," Avo agreed, patting Remmy on the shoulder companionably. They stood there in silence for a moment, then Avo turned towards the bedroom. "I'm gonna crash." Remmy turned to watch her and froze up as she started to peel her work shirt off, exposing her bare back. She paused at the door and looked over her shoulder at him. "Feel free to join me." She winked, and then disappeared into the darkness of the bedroom.

Once more, Remmy was left trying to decide whether, and to what degree, Avo was fucking with him.

\---

Remmy sighed as consciousness returned to him, blinking in the gloom. The blinds on the window managed to shut out the sunlight outside entirely - Remmy made a mental note to look into getting some for himself - but the bedside clock told him it was just past 9am. More than past time to start facing the day.

He extricated himself from Avo's sleeping paws and sat up on the side of the bed, scratching at his stomach and yawning. Then he looked down, confused, and saw that his singlet had bunched up around his armpits - he vaguely remembered Avo burying her paws in his chest wool after she had ensnared him. He pulled it back down and hauled himself to his feet, and then jumped as a paw smacked against his ass. "Lock the door behind you when you leave, cotton swab," Avo murmured from the bed.

Remmy turned back towards the bed, his mouth open to retort, then his words died away as he caught sight of Avo. She had snuggled into the patch of warmth he had left on the bed, and her other arm had wrapped around the pillow he had been using and dragged it up against her chest, much as she had done to him earlier.

She even managed to look smug when she was being cute, he thought.

On his way out the door, he took another look at the contraption on the coffee table, that was still doing admirable work holding up the makeshift weight. He wondered if he should feel pride or shame in doing his part to help small mammals have freaky sex. Mostly, he just felt glad he'd gotten through the night without being verbally savaged too badly.


	8. Marty and Charlie

More than any other apartment, Remmy knew what to expect from Marty and Charlie's place. He had been in it before, after Charlie had broken in and left the door ajar. So when the door was unlocked (and the lock was shiny, new, and expensive-looking), the apartment that was revealed to him was exactly as he remembered it, except that this time there was a cranky stoat glowering at him suspiciously from the other side of the room, and that Charlie was fully-clothed.

Well, more than fully clothed, actually. She was wearing an oversized and malformed puffy jacket, sweatpants, and a pair of mismatched fuzzy socks. "Cormo," she stated in what may have been a greeting, turning away from the door and shuffling back towards a haphazard heap of blankets piled atop a sofa cushion in a corner near the window.

Remmy stepped inside and waved in greeting to Marty, who was nestled deep into an overstuffed armchair that was either slightly too big for him or slightly too small for Charlie, staring back at Remmy suspiciously over a tome almost bigger than he was and under several layers of blankets. "I dunno what sort of fuckin' Dionysiac delights the others have you expecting, but you can loiter in our space and have some food when one of us gets around to making it."

For Marty, that was practically a warm welcome.

Remmy was glad for his wool as he looked around the room, his breath misting in the air. It was a particularly cold evening, and the forecast said it was going to get even colder as the night wore on. Remmy's wool was warding off the worst of it so far, but if things got much colder he'd have to join his temporary flatmates in huddling under blankets - or, more likely, in retreating to the heated bedroom.

"Coffee's fresh," Charlie prompted from her blanket warren, and Remmy took the invitation to wander over to the kitchenette, his attention immediately captured by the coffeemaker in question. It was shiny, modern, and had an electric readout on top, and also noticeably dented in several places. "Fell off the back of a truck," Charlie said, answering his unspoken question.

"...did it fall off the back of a truck because you jumped out of a truck with it?" Remmy asked as he opened cupboards until he found where the mugs were kept.

When he didn't get a response, he turned to look at Charlie, whose muzzle was poking out of the pile of blankets towards him. Suddenly, it broadened into a smile. "Sure. That is what happened."

Marty snorted. "Damaged in transit, judged as unsellable, reported destroyed, and someone making minimum wage swiped it before it got crushed and sold it to Charlie for a tiny fraction of retail price."

Charlie's muzzle turned towards Marty and huffed at him, who smirked back at her. Remmy smiled and turned back towards the counter, filling the mug (it had a couple of lines of writing on it that seemed vaguely familiar to him - "Oh, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd! And though she be but little, she is fierce.") and taking a sip - he'd learned to take his coffee black because there was never any milk or sugar at work. But this was worlds ahead of the terrible, bitter, percolated coffee there - this actually tasted good, instead of being something he suffered through for caffeine and warmth. He took the mug with him back to the couch and sat on the half of it that wasn't covered in Charlie's den, enjoying the warmth and aroma wafting up from the coffee, a small smile appearing on his face.

Then, somewhere on one of the shelves, a clock chimed, and Marty sighed as Charlie emerged from the blankets. She was suddenly animated as she started fiddling with an old radio set on the table next to the sofa. Remmy watched as Charlie clambered up onto the windowsill, trailing a length of bare metal wire. "Don't," Marty warned as Charlie reached for the latch - and for good reason, Remmy thought, considering the temperature outside - and Charlie huffed and stuck the antenna up high in the windowframe with a blob of sticky putty. Remmy turned a questioning glance to Marty, and the stoat rolled his eyes in response. "She's got a crush on some violinist-"

"It is not a crush," Charlie retorted as she climbed back down and started twiddling knobs on her set.

"An obsession, then."

"I am merely curious of the contradictory blend of shy and outgoing that would lead one to anonymously broadcast their music across the entire city." A burst of static filled the room, before gradually resolving into the sound of a violin being tuned.

"Anyway, she tunes in to their broadcast every evening." He snorted. "Probably some freshman over at U of Z. Violin over ham radio is the most try-hard artsy college student thing ever."

Charlie's only response was to stick her tongue out at Marty, and then the music began. The occasional crackle of static didn't do it any favours, and there was the odd missed note and a time or two they stopped abruptly before picking up again on an entirely different tune, but whoever it was, even his untrained ears could tell they had some real talent.

Charlie made some final adjustments to the radio before retreating back under the covers, visibly shivering. Remmy sipped his coffee as he listened, trying to place the oddly-familiar tune, and was then distracted from his musing as the lump of blankets crawled along the couch and nudged against his side. Having some idea what was coming, he put the mug down on the bookshelf nearest to him as the blankets shuffled around, and finally they parted and Charlie slunk out of them to cling to his side, her arms slipping under his shirt to burrow themselves into his wool. Remmy yelped as the chilly paws reached his skin and started leeching the heat out of him.

"Great, you can bother him instead of trying to use me as a hot water bottle," Marty muttered, shooting Remmy an indecipherable look.

"I don't handle the cold well," Charlie confirmed, her voice muffled by wool. She had started following her paws inside Remmy's shirt, and found that, size difference or not, Remmy's shirt wasn't built to hold his wooly bulk as well as Charlie's sweater-wearing form. So she wriggled out of it like a lizard shedding it's skin and tried again, almost tipping Remmy over as she pushed herself into his wool, and in moments only her tail was sticking out of the gap.

Remmy looked down at his chest, extremely aware of the lump of warmth resting against his skin. "Um."

"Don't let her get too comfortable," Marty said. "It's her turn to cook tonight."

Remmy felt Charlie's breath against his chest as she huffed in response. Then she started squirming, and Remmy thought that she was going to turn around and make her way back out - but instead she wriggled upwards until her ears were tickling his neck, her head poking out of the neck of his shirt parallel with his own. "Remmy," she said as soon as her head was clear of his wool, "I will require your assistance."

Remmy sighed, recovering his coffee from where had left it and taking a sip. Then he lowered the mug slightly, and Charlie took one too.

"So, how's this going to work," Remmy asked, carefully lifting himself to his feet.

Charlie wiggled slightly, and in his peripheral vision he saw two fox paws sticking out of his collar. "First, to the cupboard. We will need vegetable oil, and soy sauce."

\---

"The pan is simmering nicely. Remmy, to the freezer," Charlie commanded imperiously, apparently enjoying driving Remmy around like some sort of mecha suit.

Remmy straightened up from his stoop over the hotplates and plodded over to the fridge obediently, opening the freezer compartment on top, and stopping dead at the massive amount of frozen meat that was stacked up in it. "Holy shit, that's a lot of meat."

"That's what she said," Charlie responded instantly, sounding pleased with herself.

"Yeah," Marty spoke up from behind them. "When Charlie's between 'paying jobs'-"

"When opportunities are lacking," she corrected.

"Pick your euphemism. Anyway, when that's the case she supplies groceries in lieu of rent. And since she doesn't exactly pay retail, she gets the good stuff."

"Subsistence shoplifting," Charlie confirmed, and Marty gave an amused snort in response.

Remmy looked down at the hunk of frozen bugmeat in his hoofs, and after a moment of mental conflict, he shrugged. Not the first time he'd handled stolen goods since he'd gotten involved with... well, with his pack. And thinking of them as such caused an faint smile to appear on his lips.

He looked over at Marty, who was giving him a thoughtful look in exchange. "On that matter," the little stoat said, almost reluctantly. "If you want, next time you're thinking about buying bugmeat, check in with us. We almost always have extra we're looking to turn into a bit of cash, for much cheaper than you'd get in stores."

"I'll... keep that in mind," Remmy responded, passing the frozen meat down to Charlie's waiting paws.

"Not actually shoplifting so much any more, mind," Charlie said as she peeled the shrink-wrap off. "They've got these waterproof anti-theft emitters they put in the moisture pads now. Doesn't stop them walking out the back door, though. Minimum wage employees are usually open to opportunities to earn an extra few dollars." She put the frozen meat on a plate, then directed Remmy over to the microwave for her to put it on defrost. "It usually only works with large chains - employees of smaller stores tend to be more loyal to their employers. So there's a pleasing element of socio-economic justice to it all. The pan should be done simmering about when the meat is defrosted, so we can sit down for a few minutes now. Take me over to the sink first, I need to wash the bugmeat juices off my paws."

\---

When dinner was finally ready, Charlie reluctantly crawled back out of Remmy's shirt and into her sweater, grumbling inaudibly as she plonked herself down on a chair, her paws tucked into her armpits. The dish had turned out to be thinly-sliced bugmeat steak marinated in some sort of dark black sauce, served with rice and lettuce.

"This is a cultural abomination of a dish, Charlie," Marty grumbled happily through a mouthful.

"It is," she confirmed as she wrapped rice and meat in a strip of lettuce. "The sauce is from my family's homeland, but true accuracy with the meat would be considered immoral in this day and age." She looked to Remmy, a rare smile appearing on her face. "Especially for Remmy. I understand sheep culture frowns on cannibalism." Remmy paused in scooping meat into a strip of lettuce, but continued a moment later after he decided against responding. Undeterred, Charlie continued. "The serving method is a blend of two different restaurants I've dined and dashed at, in my tempestuous youth."

"The Zootopian melting pot," Marty snarked as he continued tucking in.

"It's very tasty," Remmy said to Charlie after chewing and swallowing another chunk of lettuce-wrapped rice and bugmeat, and meant it. The sauce was rich and complex, and the lettuce kept him from making too much of a mess with his hooves.

She smiled again, splashes of the dark sauce staining her muzzle black. "Thank you, Cormo."

\---

After dinner, Marty had cleared the table and started cleaning the dishes with the help of a stepladder as Charlie sighed and disappeared into the bathroom, the sounds of the shower starting a moment later. Remmy clopped across the tiles to stand next to Marty, taking up a tea towel to start drying the dishes as Marty put them in the rack, eliciting a muted, reluctant "thanks" from the stoat.

They worked in tense silence, the only noise being the faint sounds of the shower, the slosh of water in the sink, and the clink of crockery tapping against each other - the radio broadcast had long since trailed off into silence. Remmy worked absently, his mind whirring away on whether to address the elephant in the room or to leave well enough alone. "Do you have a problem with me being here?" he asked, after finally gathering up his courage. There was a long, tense silence, punctuated by the sounds of Marty continuing to wash up.

"Important distinction, grazer," Marty said, finally. "I don't like you being in my space, but that doesn't mean I have a problem with it. If I have to deal with a little bit of suck to keep you from having to choke down a lot of suck, then I'll do it. Because you're pack. And one day when it's me that's up shit creek, someone in the pack - maybe even you - will be there to do the same."

"Oh," Remmy replied. "So you're okay with me being pack?"

"You're a pain in the ass," was Marty's instant reply, but then, seemingly reluctantly, he continued. "But so's Avo, and the twins, and even Charlie, sometimes." Marty stewed for a minute before continuing. "I suppose you're not a bad mammal. You just got your head up your ass about pretty much everything. And at least you're trying to pull it out, so maybe in a year or two you'll actually be tolerable."

Somehow, Remmy knew that was as close to a compliment as he was going to get. "Um. Thanks."

Marty just snorted in reply, yanking the plug out of the sink as he placed the last fork on the drying rack and walking back to his reading chair.

Silence reigned in the apartment once more as Remmy finished drying the last of the dishes, only briefly broken by a naked Charlie bursting out of the bathroom and streaking across the living room to her bedroom, then emerging a few seconds later - still at top speed - wearing an enormous 'Hug Life' t-shirt he swore he'd seen on Ozzy before as a nightshirt and heading towards Remmy. He had just enough warning to brace himself against the counter before the shivering fox crawled back up into his shirt once more, eliciting an unhappy bleat from him as the damp coldness leeched out his body heat.

\---

After Remmy returned to his seat and started browsing idly on his phone, time passed in comfortable silence. After a few minutes Charlie had stuck her head out of his collar once more to investigate what he was doing, and seemed content to just watch. Eventually, the silence was broken as Marty closed his book with a snap, leaving it on the armrest as he slipped out of his chair. He glanced over at Remmy, then looked at the pile of blankets that Charlie had been using with a frown. "Those are from the bed, aren't they?"

Charlie mumbled something vaguely affirmative.

"Thought so. You gonna be up much longer?"

There was a yawn from the fox, and Remmy felt her nose pressing against the bottom of his chin. "Likely not. Cormo?"

Remmy shrugged. "I'm fine to sleep whenever. Why?"

"I sleep in Charlie's bed in winter. Not gonna stop that just because you're here. What, you expect me to leave poor Charlie to the mercies of Remmy 'wandering hooves' Cormo?" Marty snarked, and it was so obviously a joke instead of a jab at him that Remmy felt his lips twitch up in a smile.

"I doubt his hooves will wander anywhere they would be considered unwelcome," Charlie replied, and there was a pause as Remmy and Marty processed that.

"Anyway," Marty said after a few moments, "I've gotten used to warmth and company at night, and I'm not gonna suffer the cold alone just because she's found a better heat source than me for tonight. And I don't want to have to shift all these blankets solo, they weigh more than I do."

Remmy shrugged again. "Fair enough." He carefully lifted himself off the couch, careful not to jostle the fox in his shirt, and gathered up the blankets in his arms. "Lead the way, I guess." And he followed the stoat into one of the bedrooms.


End file.
